Standing In For You
by RaisingCainRight
Summary: Sherlock thinks that he's found out what John wants, but instead he might have hit on the one thing that will drive them apart. Established Johnlock (for now), rated M for the sake of my own paranoia and the possibility of sleeplessly, finals-ridden written later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**It's been a bad week, folks: too many finals projects due and too many scary pics from the season 3 set, so I figured that if I'm going to suffer from all the Abbington Angst I might as well make you suffer too :)**

**_Disclaimer: You would already know if I really owned these characters. . . _**

**Again, ****_ANY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AT ALL - reviews especially - would justify my continued existence! _**

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John was exhausted.

This in itself was not overly surprising – it had happened before, and there had been times in the army when he had been drained to the point of passing out on the nearest semi-stationary surface – but this morning, he mused, was an all-time low. God, he had lifted the same piece of toast to his mouth twice now.

He had missed both times.

John winced a little as he shifted in his seat. Damn Sherlock. Where did the man find the energy to chase a suspect halfway across London and then come home too wired to sleep? Did he bottle up all that excess energy just for the express purpose of shoving John against the wall the moment they set foot in the door?

More to the point – shifting again, John suppressed a groan – who in their right mind would let the blasted man get away with it?

No, best not to answer that one. John steeled himself to make a third attempt at the maddening toast.

Speak of the devil: just as he lifted the food to chin height, Sherlock himself breezed down the stairs and threw himself into the chair opposite. John had barely had time to register this strangeness – his partner never sat at the table, unless, well, he was _on _it – before the blasted partner in question slid a photograph across the table to him.

No. He was not doing this. Not today, not when he could barely see straight for fatigue. John made no move to pick up the picture. "You know precisely what state I'm in, you ridiculous bastard, don't start hounding me now. I'm not going on a case today: in fact, I may just call off at the surgery as well."

"Didn't sleep well?" Sherlock asked innocently, shifting in his own seat as if in sympathy but in the process actually pulling the blue silken robe a little wider agape at the chest.

"Didn't sleep at all," John said shortly, looking steadfastly down at the dry bread in his hand. Hell, where was his jam? He had been sitting there for ten minutes and hadn't even noticed that it was missing. . .

"I'll get it for you," Sherlock said, reading his frustration as easily as always, and standing with a rustle of silk and a flash of skin – acting, as always, on only half of the frustration that he understood or thought he could profit from.

"Don't bother," John said, a little too quickly. Sherlock and condiments didn't work well together – or rather, they _did_ work well together, in fact rather too well for John's sluggish presence of mind this morning. . . "I'm not hungry." It wasn't even a lie – a man dying of exhaustion couldn't very well starve too, could he? "You eat."

"But _I _want it," Sherlock said with a mock pout, stepping gracefully around the table – and rather too close – as he went to stand by the cupboard.

"_Sherlock._" John rarely resorted to that tone of voice. "Sit." Sherlock had frozen in place, listening intently, fixedly, as if awaiting an order. God, if John had been any more awake he would have taken advantage of the reversal, but he was so _tired_: "I said I don't want it, and I know you don't really."

Having determined that he would get no more of that delicious tone, Sherlock returned to lounging in the opposite seat, watching John intently and even giving a sarcastic little cheer when John finally got a mouthful of bread.

"I ought to hate you," John said, his jaw moving up and down with excruciating slowness.

"Boring," Sherlock said. With a languid movement he pushed the photograph further down the table towards John. "You might as well admit that you wouldn't have it any other way."

No, John knew he wouldn't – what was left of the soldier in him could not admit defeat, even if it meant a marathon and a sore ass the next morning. . .

As if he could read this train of thought – and damn him, he probably could – Sherlock smiled, that lopsided one-corned smirk that could send shivers down John's spine at night but just made him even more tired, as if that were physically possible, the next morning.

"Just look at the photo, John."

"I told you, I'm not getting involved in any cases today. God, I have to get to work."

"And if I told you it's not for a case?"

"I'd say you were lying, and doing it terribly to boot. Sod off." John made a valiant attempt at a second mouthful.

"You can top next time," Sherlock said.

Low. In spite of himself, John smiled, and went to reach for the photo – although his triumph dimmed a little when he realized that he already had picked it up and was automatically scanning it.

She was in her late thirties. Her hair was blond but probably dyed, her face structure was prominent without being chiseled, her eyes were sharp and blue and pierced straight through the lens and into the viewer. . . even with the man sitting across from him, John would have said she was striking, but he was sure to have missed something he would be belittled for.

"Who's she, then?" he asked. "And what gruesomely horrible manner of death did she suffer that merits interrupting my breakfast?"

"Please, don't be ridiculous," Sherlock scoffed. "I don't see any breakfast to speak of, just a man trying with varying degrees of success to feed himself a particularly insipid grain product even he knows he doesn't want."

Before John could give that the retort it deserved, Sherlock had taken a deep breath – nerves? – and continued, as if afraid of where the words would disappear if not released.

"Besides, that's hardly the way I would have expected you to speak about the mother of our child. This is Mary Morstan. She has agreed to serve as our surrogate."

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**Review if you hate me or have an idea where you want this to go! I already have a few, evil snicker. . .**


	2. Chapter 2

** I am so sorry that this wasn't done sooner. I would explain, but you wouldn't believe it, and anyway that's not why you're here. **

**Disclaimer: You would already know if I really owned these characters. . . **

**And feedback of any type is loved and cherished!**

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John was not obtuse: he had long proven as much. He had seen through every cut and retort Sherlock had dished out, through every façade he had put up, through every. . .

Yet every time that Sherlock thought he had done the same, John surprised him.

At Sherlock's simple, three-sentence introduction to Mary Morstan, John had frozen in place, that ridiculous wheaten excuse of a prop stalled halfway to his mouth. Sherlock would have ridiculed it as a pose, a cartoon mock-up, had he not been so suddenly unsure.

He struggled to keep his voice even but couldn't even pretend that he'd expected such a reaction.

"Bit not good?"

John neither answered nor looked at him. Those stormy grey-blue eyes had latched onto the opposite wall as though it could provide the answers that he, Sherlock sodding Holmes, couldn't.

In mounting panic, Sherlock snatched back the photograph. Had the doctor noticed something that he'd missed? He had produced the picture of Morstan, hadn't he?

No, the photograph was in order. What was wrong?

No matter, there was one surefire way to fix anything: think it through.

"It has been six weeks since I first initiated sexual contact, and you have not denied my advances since. You progressed from astonishment at my temerity to surprise at your own enthusiasm within the course of forty-five hours, and have since settled into comfortable contentment. That is the temporal aspect covered."

"My brother does not realize the extent of my knowledge concerning the family accounts. I was set to come into a sizeable amount some years ago, and although he withheld the access information for fear of how I would use it, I have since obtained the codes. It was simple - merely that I had never had sufficient reason to do so before. You need not be concerned about paying for a child on surgery wages. And that is the financial aspect – covered.

Sherlock took a deep breath before continuing. Perhaps this was the issue.

"Finally, Morstan has a clean bill of health and verifiable positive experience as a surrogate without any of the physical uncertainty I would attach to a more veteran candidate. Perhaps, I concede, you could not be expected to know that, but with your history of following my conclusions unhesitatingly I knew you would accept my selection of surrogate. And there you have the physiological aspect – covered."

He leaned back in his chair, again deliberately shifting to pull his robe a little further apart. It was refreshing, actually, how the combination of rapid-fire reasoning and unexpectedly-exposed physique always drew a light to his partner's eyes. And he was not unwilling to return the favors from last night.

Hell, he wanted it.

For the first time, though, there was no response to his tactic. John remained staring resolutely ahead.

Sherlock sat up with a rush, pulling his robe back in place with an instinct his mind did not recognize. Fear? His ruse had never failed before.

"John?"

Nothing.

He hated the words and the necessity behind them so much: only John could have ever forced them from him.

"I – I don't understand."

Strange, Sherlock noted – it was those words, that admission, that snapped John's eyes back to focus on him – not the logic, not the skin, not the brilliance. The fear. The doubt.

"Did it really _not occur _to you that there might be something else?" John asked quietly.

What could he have missed? What else did that leave? "What could I have missed?"

"I don't know," John said, coldly. Coldly? Why coldly?

"A human side, perhaps?" he finished.

Ah. Well. And as suddenly as that, their roles had been reversed – now it was John doing the asking, the demanding, and Sherlock was the one completely overwhelmed by unexpected information.

"You didn't even think to ask me," John said steadily. "It's you, so I might understand that, but for God's sake, you didn't even _tell_ me. You can't just waltz down the stairs and tell me we're going to have. . . "

He swallowed. Hard. From the all-but-imperceptible shake and the sudden loss of eye contact, Sherlock knew just the words he was avoiding.

_We're going to have a child. _

The very words ones that Sherlock had assumed – no, _known_! – would have made him happy.

_Wrong, again, freak_, echoed a tiny voice from the farthest corners of his mind palace.

"I –I thought you wanted this," Sherlock said, hating how quickly the words came out, how loudly they fell, how empty they left him.

"And what made you think that?"

How was he supposed to explain? Drag out all his horrible memories of those insipid and frankly horrifying girlfriends and wave them under John's nose, shouting that of course he cared for John more than they ever could but there was still one thing that any one of those creatures could give this amazing man that he could not. . .

No. Sherlock could barely manage a civil "good morning" some days. There was no way he would be able to articulate _this_.

Thankfully, John didn't seem to notice.

"Well." With a brisk shake of the head, the doctor finally brought the benighted toast to his mouth with purpose. "You've obviously gone through a lot of trouble to set this up, so I won't add any more until I know exactly - and Sherlock, I mean it, _exactly_ - what we will be getting into."

It was obvious he was still shaken and upset – the tell-tale signs twitching at the corner of his mouth and eyes– but with a small burst of joy Sherlock noted that this was the first time this morning John had gone back to saying "we."

A small plural possessive pronoun shouldn't have made him so happy. But then, it _was _coming from John.


End file.
